Wednesday, June 25, 2014

It has begun, as we knew it must.
One by one the aunties, uncles, mums and dads,
who only yesterday greeted us with laughs, and smiles,
are freezing as silver halide in wooden frames.

Each fortuitous photo taken at some other event,
grabbed, together with some favourite song or hymn
and reproduced in some garish font preferred by those
who do such things, becomes the last reminder, the
last awkward and inadequate full stop.

And like sheep in that last race, we greet each other.
Smiling, despite the unfamiliar hall, the friends of
friends we did not know, the children, the grandchildren, all
And discuss the weather.

What is a life?
From a million billion data points
the biographer pulls those we think we know the best.
And yet how very tedious those events become
when all the time
thinking back
each one recalls
the echoes of memory
of childhood moments
found under wraps
intangible artifacts of identity you haven't seen in years
falling like raindrops in the sun.